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Southeast Asia is welcoming the thaw in US-China ties continuing after the Xi-Trump summit, with analysts saying the region could feel less pressure alongside fewer open frictions between the two over the South China Sea. Yet, caution persists as the summit left deeper disputes unresolved. “Stable great-power relations – competitive but with sturdy guardrails – will create more legroom for third countries to navigate an increasingly complex world,” according to Lucio Blanco Pitlo III, a research...

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We have put together stories from our coverage of the Xi-Trump summit. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing.

1. From wine to ping-pong, Trump and Xi’s state dinner leans on historic symbolism When US President Donald Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in the East Room, every detail of the state dinner was steeped in symbolism, with sparkling wine served as a nod to a pivotal moment in Sino-US relations and references to “ping-pong diplomacy”.
2. How...

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Mrima Hill, a sacred site about 65km (40 miles) southwest of Mombasa on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast, is emerging as a new front in the US-China rivalry for critical minerals. US-led and Chinese bidders are competing for rights to develop the site, which is rich in rare earths and niobium, a metal used to make steel stronger and lighter. American officials have offered to support Kenya’s development of its domestic critical minerals processing industry as Washington seeks to challenge Beijing’s...

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Han Zheng, China’s vice-president, called on “major countries” to respect the sovereignty and security of Middle Eastern nations and bring about a two-state solution for the “Palestinian question” on Saturday at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in an implicit dig at the US and Israel. This came as some analysts questioned why Chinese President Xi Jinping opted not to address the global body given his three-day summit in Washington with US President Donald Trump this week – despite the short...

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US President Donald Trump is pushing for a rebrand of artificial intelligence (AI) — and looking to get the world’s other AI superpower, China, on board. All US government documents, and “hopefully the world’s”, will use the term “superintelligence”, or SI, to refer to the fast-evolving technology, Trump said at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. The same day, the US State Department ordered US diplomats to use SI instead of AI in all communications moving forward, the Associated...

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Chinese researchers appear to have revealed a previously unknown satellite-to-satellite refuelling operation in high Earth orbit, putting the country at the forefront of a technology that could reshape the space race. In a paper undergoing peer review for the Journal of Deep Space Exploration, the team said China had “successfully provided room-temperature propellant refuelling for a high-orbit BeiDou satellite for the first time”. The researchers from the state-funded Deep Space Exploration...

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As China has emerged as a peer competitor to the United States in many areas, an increasingly familiar question is whether it has become a superpower. The question, however, may rest on a definition of power that belongs to another era. China possesses many attributes traditionally associated with great powers: a large population, vast territory, a major economy, advanced technological capabilities and growing military strength. Yet Beijing describes China as a “major country” rather than a...

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China and the United States have agreed to pursue a new military crisis-communication pact following the summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, according to Beijing, potentially giving commanders another mechanism for managing dangerous encounters across the Indo-Pacific. China’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that the two militaries had agreed to conclude a memorandum of understanding on “crisis communication and prevention” as soon as possible. The two militaries already have...

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There is little question that Jensen Huang and Lisa Su, the heads of US semiconductor chip giants Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), had secured two of the best seats in the house at the White House state dinner on Thursday evening: at the head table alongside the two presidents and their wives. But what remains unclear is how much progress they were able to make on their primary goal of restoring access to the Chinese market, amid entrenched opposition to that happening in both China and...

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When Donald Trump arrives in Shenzhen for the November Apec summit, he will face a Chinese leader even more confident than the one who left Washington this week after a state visit heavy on pageantry but light on concrete deliverables. Experts attributed this confidence to three key factors – a newly upgraded bilateral framework seeking a “constructive relationship of strategic stability based on respect, fairness and reciprocity”, the warmer tone during Xi’s three-day visit, and – crucially –...

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The Brics-founded New Development Bank could help launch a fund by the end of the year to guarantee cheap loans for poor families in Africa and Latin America, Brazil’s social development minister said. The scheme would be the Shanghai-based lender’s first financial commitment to Brazil’s global anti-hunger alliance, an initiative sidelined by Washington’s presidency of the G20 this year. Wellington Dias told the South China Morning Post on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in...

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Over a private tea session in the White House’s Red Room to mark the end of Xi Jinping’s state visit, US President Donald Trump struck a relaxed tone, marvelling across the table at how fast the Chinese leader had made the trip to America. “It’s a very fast plane … the fastest plane,” Trump said, in footage captured after the White House TV press pool resumed coverage following a court ruling that restored access to outlets previously banned by the US president. “[It was due to] its route,” Xi...

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The new US-Denmark-Greenland security agreement could narrow China’s room to engage in the Arctic – particularly in resource-rich Greenland – and potentially push Beijing closer to Russia, Chinese experts on the matter said. According to observers, the deal – signed on Tuesday – could have the broader effect of accelerating the securitisation of the Arctic and making Western Arctic states more cautious about cooperation with China. But it would be unlikely to significantly disrupt China’s...

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Just a month after Saudi Arabia signed a regional mutual defence deal with Pakistan and Turkey, attacks by Yemen’s Houthis against the kingdom’s energy infrastructure and military sites are testing the pact’s limits. At a hastily convened meeting of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement in Riyadh on Friday, military chiefs of the three parties reaffirmed their commitment to collective defence, according to the Saudi Press Agency. The agency said the talks focused on “intelligence cooperation,...

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First ladies Peng Liyuan and Melania Trump opened a new front in US-China exchanges this week, with their unusually frequent and spontaneous interactions putting a more personal face on ties during the presidential summit in Washington. The pair charted a parallel path of soft power diplomacy – sharing conversations, cultural outings and moments of apparent warmth during a visit otherwise shadowed by trade tensions, and artificial intelligence and other strategic issues. According to US-China...

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Taiwan’s transfer of a former coastguard vessel to the Philippines has triggered a dual controversy – raising concerns over the interests of Taiwanese fishermen and prompting strong criticism from Beijing. The matter centres on a 61-metre (200-foot) retired cutter handed over to the Philippine Coast Guard through a non-governmental organisation on Monday, as Taipei and Manila expand practical maritime cooperation despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties. Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office...

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China and the United States have agreed to establish a bilateral communication channel for “super intelligence” incidents, according to the White House. In a statement about the deliverables of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington, the US said the next meeting of the newly formed US-China Super Intelligence (SI) Dialogue would take place by November. China’s Ministry of Commerce confirmed on Thursday that its senior trade negotiators had held their first talks with the US on...

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We have put together stories from our coverage of Peng Liyuan during the Xi-Trump summit. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing.

1. China’s first lady Peng Liyuan projects glamour and soft power on world stage China’s first lady Peng Liyuan is again stepping into the international limelight as she travels to Washington with President Xi Jinping this week.
2. Peng Liyuan and Melania Trump renew acquaintance as Xi arrives in US Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan...

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Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is reportedly trying to arrange a phone call with Donald Trump following the US president’s nostalgic invocation of the alliance with China during World War II, references that sent shock waves through Tokyo. Trump made the references as he welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to the White House on Thursday for his first state visit to Washington in over a decade. Both Trump and Xi repeatedly invoked their nations’ wartime alliance against Japan in their...

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Offshore wind farms can reduce the coverage of shore-based radar systems and create areas where targets become harder to detect, according to a new study. The researchers found that at a range of 5km (3 miles), effective radar coverage fell by 6.9 per cent while blind spots increased by 14.9 per cent. The research, published online last month in the peer-reviewed Chinese journal Radio Engineering, was conducted by Professor Liu Zunnian and his team from Qingdao Technological University and the...

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During their three-day summit that ended on Friday, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping worked overtime to underscore their increasingly close relationship even as the meeting produced few concrete deliverables. But the fact that the two economic and military giants are talking – and pledging to talk some more – suggests some period of relative stability ahead, certainly relative to last year’s all-out trade war, chest-thumping and market turmoil, said analysts, companies...

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As Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump wrapped up their three-day state visit on Friday, a stark contrast in the two presidential couples’ hand-holding dynamics was on display, body language experts said. The exchanges between Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, and Trump and first lady Melania Trump, were closely followed on the trip, with the couples’ activities together on Friday culminating in an outing at the National Archives Museum in Washington. The couples’ divergent...

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Washington and Beijing have spent nearly a decade trading tariffs, export controls and blacklists, with each round threatening rupture. Yet they keep recovering from the brink. Tensions soared before summits and plunged immediately after. For example, in 2019 at Osaka, Trump walked back threats to impose tariffs on US$300 billion of Chinese goods and eased curbs on Huawei after Beijing reportedly agreed to buy American farm goods. In Busan last October, he lowered tariffs and shelved export...

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Chinese President Xi Jinping has completed a whirlwind 43-hour trip to the United States, his first state visit to the country in more than a decade, with US President Donald Trump pulling out all the stops to make it a grand affair. The two leaders met several times during the visit, including at a ceremonial airport welcome, the White House reception and bilateral talks on a wide range of topics including trade, tariffs and Taiwan. They also attended a state dinner in Xi’s honour with top...

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China is poised to decide which of two Latin American women becomes the first to lead the United Nations, after three rounds of informal voting in the Security Council failed to produce a favourite. Several UN delegations that spoke to the South China Morning Post over the past three days said Beijing was weighing Rebeca Grynspan, the Costa Rican economist who heads UN Trade and Development, and Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Guyana’s ambassador to the UN. The same delegations said China had ruled...

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